Welcome to the Hog Blog, a blog chronicling minor-league baseball in the Lehigh Valley. Tom Housenick, The Morning Call's IronPigs beat writer, has been at The Morning Call since 2008. In a previous lifetime, he was at Lackawanna County Stadium in Moosic talking with future Phillies Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard, among many others.
He’ll now be spending his summers in search of who the Phillies are hoping to be the next Chase Utley and Cole Hamels plus any outfielder who catch and hit. What he really hopes to find are the next Mariano Rivera, Todd Helton and Jim Thome --- great human beings who happened to be great at this sport.
He spent the last five years covering Colonial League football, college basketball and high school track & field.

A year ago Lansdale native Chris Lubanski was schuedled to play for the Pacific Coast League in the Triiple-A All-star game at Coca-Cola Park, which would've been his first professional game in his home state.

Now, he'll be playing his home games in Reading.

The Phillies signed Lubanski, a former first-round pick of the Kansas City Royals, out of the independent North American Baseball League and assigned him to Reading. Lubanski hit .259 with four homers and 29 RBIs in 57 games for the Chico Outlaws after being releasee in spring training by the Florida Marlins.